“I hate your having to take it all. I don’t risk anything.”
“I wish you did. Then you’d be happier. Poor Richard—so safe in his man’s world. … You can be sorry about that, if you like. But not about me. I shall never be sorry. Nothing in this world can make me sorry. … I shouldn’t like Mamma to know about it. But even Mamma couldn’t make me sorry. … I’ve always been happy about the things that matter, the real things. I hate people who sneak and snivel about real things. … People who have doubts about God and don’t like them and snivel. I had doubts about God once, and they made me so happy I could hardly bear it. … Mamma couldn’t bear it making me happy. She wouldn’t have minded half so much if I had been sorry and snivelled. She wouldn’t mind so much if I was sorry and snivelled about this.”
“You said you weren’t going to think about your mother.”
“I’m not thinking about her. I’m thinking about how happy I have been and am and shall be.”
Even thinking about Mamma couldn’t hurt you now. Nothing could hurt the happiness you shared with Richard. What it was now it would always be. Pure and remorseless.
VII
Delicious, warm, shining day. She had her coat and hat on ready to go down with him. The hansom stood waiting in the street.
They were looking up the place on the map, when the loud double knock came.
“That’s for Peters. He’s always getting wires—”
“If we don’t go today we shall never go. We’ve only got five more now.”
The long, soft rapping on the door of the room. Knuckles rapping out their warning. “You can’t say I don’t give you time.”
Richard took the orange envelope.
“It’s for you, Mary.”
“Oh, Richard, ‘Come at once. Mother ill.—Dorsy.’ ”
She would catch the ten train. That was what the hansom was there for.
“I’ll send your things on after you.”
The driver and the slog-slogging horse knew that she would catch the train. Richard knew.
He had the same look on his face that was there before when Mamma was ill. Sorrow that wasn’t sorrow. And the same clear thought behind it.
Chapter XXXIV
I
Dorsy’s nerves were in a shocking state. You could see she had been afraid all the time; from the first day when Mamma had kept on saying, “Has Mary come back?”
Dorsy was sure that was how it began; but she couldn’t tell you whether it was before or afterwards that she had forgotten the days of the week.
Anybody could forget the days of the week. What frightened Dorsy was hearing her say suddenly, “Mary’s gone.” She said it to herself when she didn’t know Dorsy was in the room. Then she had left off asking and wondering. For five days she hadn’t said anything about you. Not anything at all. When she heard your name she stared at them with a queer, scared look.
Catty said that yesterday she had begun to be afraid of Dorsy and couldn’t bear her in the room. That was what made them send the wire.
What had she been thinking of those five days? It was as though she knew.
Dorsy said she didn’t believe she was thinking anything at all. Dorsy didn’t know.
II
Somebody knew. Somebody had been talking. She had found Catty in the room making up the bed for her in the corner. Catty was crying as she tucked in the blankets. “There’s some people,” she said, “as had ought to be poisoned.” But she wouldn’t say why she was crying.
You could tell by Mr. Belk’s face, his mouth drawn in between claws of nose and chin; by Mrs. Belk’s face and her busy eyes, staring. By the old men sitting on the bench at the corner, their eyes coming together as you passed.
And Mr. Spencer Rollitt, stretching himself straight and looking away over your head and drawing in his breath with a “Fivv‑vv‑vv” when he asked how Mamma was. His thoughts were hidden behind his bare, wooden face. He was a just and cautious man. He wouldn’t accept any statement outside the Bible without proof.
You had to go down and talk to Mrs. Waugh. She had come to see how you would look. Her mouth talked about Mamma but her face was saying all the time, “I’m not going to ask you what you were doing in London in Mr. Nicholson’s flat, Mary. I’m sure you wouldn’t do anything you’d be sorry to think of with your poor mother in the state she’s in.”
I don’t care. I don’t care what they think.
There would still be Catty and Dorsy and Louisa Wright and Miss Kendal and Dr. Charles with their kind eyes that loved you. And Richard living his eternal life in your heart.
And Mamma would never know.
III
Mamma was going backwards and forwards between the open worktable and the cabinet. She was taking out the ivory reels and thimbles and button boxes, wrapping them in tissue paper and hiding them in the cabinet. When she had locked the doors she waited till you weren’t looking to lift up her skirt and hide the key in her petticoat pocket.
She was happy, like a busy child at play.
She was never ill, only tired like a child that plays too long. Her face was growing smooth and young and pretty again; a pink flush under her eyes. She would never look disapproving or reproachful any more. She couldn’t listen any more when you read aloud to her. She had forgotten how to play halma.
One day she found the green box in the cabinet drawer. She came to you carrying it with care. When she had put it down on the table she lifted the lid and looked at the little green and white pawns and smiled.
“Roddy’s soldiers,” she said.
Richard doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he asks me to give up Mamma. He might as well ask
